Get Out of My House!
by Checkerboards
Summary: Q: When is the Riddler's lair not a lair? A: When it's someone else's apartment.
1. Girls, Girls, Girls

_What has three heads and no brains_? "No, your _other_ left!" the Riddler snapped angrily at his henchgirls as they made ready to burst through the wrong door. Really, if he hadn't needed them as muscle, he'd have left them at home. Better yet, he would have never hired them. Or no, even better, he'd have never gone to that damned bar and gotten drunk near them in the first place. When he'd agreed to hire them, they'd assured him that they were professionals and he'd drunkenly believed every word they said. Now, in the harsh light of sobriety, their claims seemed rather weak.

The girls rearranged themselves around the correct door. "Marteau chanceux," they murmured, clanking their guns together ("For luck," they'd explained to a baffled Riddler the first time they'd done it, never mind the fact that at the time they'd been "robbing" one of his empty lairs as a rehearsal for today and thus hadn't needed luck). Three booted feet whomped hard into the door. It refused to fly dramatically off of its hinges. "Ouch!" the girls yelped, limping backward to reassess the situation.

Eddie had his face buried in one gloved hand. _Idiots_. "Use the doorknob!" he hissed.

Before the girls could obey, the door creaked open. A thin, bespectacled man with a half-eaten Twinkie in one hand leaned out. "Can I help...you..." he trailed off as he noticed three scantily-clad women aiming deadly weapons at his face. They paused in a silent tableau.

One of the girls, Query, stepped forward with a look of intense concentration on her face. "What's...what's yellow and oblong-"

"Eldritch," interrupted Question from the left. "What's yellow and eldritch and weighs as much as a ton of gold?"

"No, that's not it," the third, Quiz, said, lowering her gun to argue with the other two. "It's _supposed_ to be 'what's golden and heavy and-"

"Forget it!" Eddie snapped, all hope of pulling off a respectable themed robbery completely evaporating as he watched his three henchgirls fumbling their way through the riddle. One riddle he'd given them - one! - and they couldn't even repeat it. "Just get in there."

"Right, boss!" Query grabbed the man by the collar and walked him backward into the room. "This is a stickup!" she bellowed happily to the other occupant of the room, a middle-aged woman with her hands wrapped around a gigantically messy sandwich. The woman shrieked and thrust her hands into the air, sending the sandwich flying. With a wet thudding noise, it hit the fluorescent light in the ceiling and disintegrated. Tomatoes, lettuce, lunchmeat and various other tasty things rained down on the disgusted Riddler and his girls. The mayonnaise-smeared bread flopped neatly over the end of Question's gun.

Eddie delicately removed a slice of half-eaten ham from his shoulder. He'd have done better to hire that set of thugs from Jersey, he fumed to himself. Okay, so they were uncouth and smelled like the bottom of a monkey's cage, but at least they didn't take lessons from B-movies on proper criminal behavior.

Quiz bounded over to the safe in the corner. "I got it!" she shrilled, wildly spinning the dial, one ear pressed to the door of the safe to listen for clicking tumblers.

Eddie rolled his eyes and shoved her out of the way. _54-23-12. _The safe door creaked open to reveal beautiful stacks of money. Finally, something had gone right! They reached in and grabbed the cash, stuffing it into large canvas sacks. Eddie took the opportunity to bolster his own share by secreting a few bundles of cash in his pockets.

"Let's go," he snapped, ignoring the two stunned workers as he stormed out. In a whirl of fishnet tights, the girls followed him.

When they had safely made it to the van, Eddie started to relax ever so slightly. He'd at least gotten it through their thick little heads that they needed to get away as fast as possible. He buckled himself securely into the passenger seat as Question revved the engine and squealed out of the parking lot.

They hadn't even made it a block away from the heist before Query yanked a fistful of bills from her bag. "Whee!" she crowed, tossing it in the air. Laughing, Quiz did the same. They pelted one another with money as Question aimed them toward the freeway.

Eddie was trying very hard to ignore them. He'd get them home, he'd get his cut of the money, and then he'd kick them to the curb. He was _never_ going through this again. Ever. This was worse than the time that he and Harley Quinn had tried to rob Wayne Manor on the same night.

He scowled out the passenger window. "Can't you two be quiet?" he growled as the two girls in the back shrieked with joy.

"Sorry, boss!" they chirped, beginning to stuff the cash back into its sacks.

Blessed, blessed silence reigned for almost thirty seconds.

"Hey, that's mine!" Quiz said, snatching a bill from Query's hand.

"Liar! I had all the hundreds-"

"Bitch!"

"Whore!"

Eddie tipped his hat over his eyes, counting very emphatically to ten as the two henchgirls proceeded to re-enact the final fight from 'Rocky' in his backseat. They would be home soon. He only had to put up with them for another few minutes.

His thoughts were interrupted by a soprano scream from the driver's seat. "Oh _hell_!" Question screeched, slamming on the brakes. Eddie's seatbelt suddenly did an amazing impression of a boa constrictor. His hat flew into the air, uncovering his eyes just in time to reveal the side of a sleek black car directly in front of them. _Crunch_! Money fluttered down around him in the sudden, stunned silence.

Okay. Everything would be okay, they'd simply have to walk home. They'd just grab the money, ignore the other driver and...and...The other driver was glaring at them through a giant hole in his window. One of the pointy ears on his cowl was bent at a funny angle...

Oh God, they'd T-boned the Batmobile.

At least there'd be no worry about exchanging insurance information.

Question had rammed their van into the driver's side, which would have bought them an extra few seconds if the Batmobile had had doors instead of a sliding roof. Eddie tore off the seatbelt, snatched up his hat and cane and scrambled out of the van.

To hell with the girls and to hell with the money. This atrocity of a day was not going to end with a trip back to Arkham if he had any say in it. He tore down the street, taking only a brief moment to glance over his shoulder. Batman had his hands full with the three terrors, who were swarming him like starfish clinging to a tasty oyster.

_Splash_! The Riddler yelped with shock as his foot came down in an icy puddle, splattering him with frigid, muddy water. There was no time to change course, so he gritted his teeth and pounded through the rest of the puddle, sending what was essentially liquid mud up in fountains around his ankles. A particularly large spray caught him in the face as he rounded the corner, wet shoes skidding wildly on the pavement.

Where the hell was he? That little coffee shop looked familiar...oh _yes_, he knew where he was now. He had a lair right down the street! If he could just make it there before Batman finished with the girls, he'd be safe.

Lungs burning, ankles aching, Eddie ran. He slid around the last corner like a hockey player, sending a sheet of water splatting over a newsstand as his feet hydroplaned through yet another puddle. A grin of triumph broke over his face as he splashed down the stairs that led to his underground hideout. The awning above him repelled most of the rain (and incidentally blocked the sight of him from the street).

He hadn't been here in at least two years. The prospect of spending the night in a dusty, neglected lair wasn't exactly making him jump for joy, but it was certainly better than anything that awaited him at the hands of the Batman. When he was safely under the awning, he removed his suit jacket and squeezed a good portion of the water from it before putting it back on. He was fairly certain that he'd left some spare clothes in the closet and some canned soup in the kitchen cupboards. It was hardly the celebratory dinner he'd wanted, but then, what was there to celebrate? He'd come away with something like a thousand dollars, hardly enough to even replace the van.

As he drew closer to the door, he noticed a musky, rich scent wafting through the air at him. He frowned. The last time he'd smelled something like that before opening the door, it had turned out to be a dead rat in the ventilation system. _Oh, for the life of a rogue_, he thought bitterly. _Musty old clothes, canned soup, and Eau de Souris Mort in the air ducts. Bliss._

The doorknob turned easily in his hand. He didn't remember leaving it unlocked, but then it had been a good two years since he'd last been there...Muttering about dead rats and cleaning bills, he shoved the door open. His mouth dropped in shock.

Someone had been here. Someone had broken in and...and _repainted. _Nothing was green! Nothing was green and all his question-mark stuff had vanished! Who had replaced his couch with that red monstrosity in the middle of the room? Who had put pictures of cats and unicorns on the walls? His lair was not a home for _unicorns_.

There was a gasp from the kitchen. He turned furious eyes on a young lady standing at the stove, a wooden spoon in her hand. They simultaneously pointed accusing fingers at one another and shrieked "Who are you and what are you doing in _my house_?"

(_to be continued_)


	2. When Worlds Collide

The blame for what happened next in the little underground living room can be laid squarely at the feet of reality television. Years ago, if a man had burst unexpectedly into a woman's house, it would be assumed that he was there to a) attack her, b) steal her property, c) kidnap her or d) all of the above. A piercing scream would rend the air. The police would immediately be notified and the miscreant would be dragged away to a suitable alternate location, preferably one with décor along the lines of iron bars and cement walls, there to rot until the gates of time rusted shut across his unenviable fate and so on and so forth.

However, since the introduction of hidden cameras and televised practical jokes, the modern mind has been diverted into mute acceptance of oddities such as sudden intruders as a survival method. If someone is dressed in funny clothing, they must be filming something. Clearly, then, when confronted with, say, a trio of six-foot-tall squirrels abducting a man at a park bench, the instinctive response of the average bystander is to passively watch, not to call the cops.

So it should not surprise anyone that the girl at the stove - Jackie Baker - did not automatically reach for her cell phone and contact the police when the mud-spattered man stumbled in through her front door. Gotham was the home of several late-night talk shows that often did things like this to the members of the general public. She was not anxious to join the ranks of humiliated blurred-out faces on the television screens of the nation.

However, she was also not anxious to play hostess to a man that looked as if he was trying to impersonate a chocolate-covered strawberry. He was a head-to-toe mudball and he was dripping on her carpet. And for some reason, he was glaring at her like _she_ was the one doing something wrong!

"This isn't your house," she said firmly to him.

"Oh, I _beg_ to differ," he said icily, folding his arms. The cane he held in one hand slanted over the arm of the couch and merrily started to polka-dot it with muddy water.

Well, add _that_ to the list of things to clean tonight. "Beg all you want," she snapped, "and then get out!"

"Let me make something very clear to you," the man hissed, glowering at her. "I-"

A car whooshed by outside. Instinctively, he whirled toward the door, cane brandished in both hands as if he was Casey at the Bat waiting for the third pitch. Filthy water sprayed in a circle around him.

"You're getting mud all over the place!"

"_Shut up_," he hissed at her, not taking his eyes off of the doorway. "Just...shut..._up_."

"Why should I?" she challenged.

He sighed, teeth gritted, and said slowly "Batman's out there. He'll hear you."

"So what?" Jackie was confused. What did Batman have to do with anything? She stared at the man's back for a moment, hoping for enlightenment. Unfortunately, the back of his suit was full of more question marks than her thoughts.

Wait a minute, question marks? Why was this guy dressed in a green suit covered with...question marks...Why was this man in a Riddler costume?

If this was a joke, it was in exceedingly poor taste. _You'd think whoever sent him could have found a better person to play the Riddler,_ she thought, absently stirring the peas as she looked over the half-starved, filthy man. _This one looks like he's been living on the street!_

_Maybe he had been_. She frowned and looked him over again. He certainly was in shoddy condition. Under the mud, she could see that his suit was popping apart at the seams. She shouldn't have yelled at the poor guy. He was just doing his job, even if it was a rather strange one. Well, she'd be nice, play along with the gag, and hopefully get rid of him without too much more fuss.

* * *

The Riddler had returned his focus to the door, listening for the Batman. The single entrance was one of the many reasons why he'd kept this lair even though it was so small. Most people thought that a lack of windows was a bad thing. Eddie, veteran of countless Bat-invasions, knew differently.

_So what_? he mocked in his head, imitating the girl. Yeah, so what if he got splattered all over her ugly red couch? So what if the Batman broke both his legs and delivered him back to Arkham? (He'd had _that_ particular experience one too many times, and by that, he meant once. There was nothing quite so painful as traveling the rooftops slung over the Bat's shoulder while your broken legs swung in the wind.)

He wanted desperately to just throw the girl out into the street. But she'd probably stick around and yell at him, maybe pound on the door for a few hours, and that would certainly attract attention - pointy-eared, black-caped attention that he very much wanted to avoid.

Besides, as much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't sure he could manage to get her out the door. He'd been so busy planning this heist that he hadn't really eaten much of anything in the past few days. (And since Quiz was in charge of the cooking, he hadn't really _wanted_ to eat much of anything either.) Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he was feeling a certain shakiness in his legs.

Well, he had other lairs, didn't he? He could just leave...but the prospect of crossing two miles of rainy, Bat-infested alleyways was a grim one indeed. And anyway, the thought of meekly surrendering a hideout that Batman hadn't found yet made him wince.

Well, standing here staring at the door wasn't getting him anywhere. He turned to face the girl, lowering the cane to the floor. As he leaned on it, he tried not to make it too obvious that it was the only thing keeping him on his feet. "How did you get in here?" he asked, keeping his voice as calm as possible. When he'd left the place, there had been two puzzle-based locks on the door that should have been beyond anyone's capabilities but his own.

She shrugged, setting the wooden spoon down on the stovetop. "I've been renting this place for a year now." A bit of his anger with her melted away as he vowed to track down her landlord and do something nasty to him, both for invading his lair and for redecorating it like something out of a Charlotte Gilman story. "You say this is your place, but I've never seen you before. Where've you been for the last year?"

Well, last year hadn't exactly been a banner year for him. He'd spent most of the year inside Arkham's infirmary ward. When he hadn't been in Arkham, he'd been on the run from the cops, and Batman, and a handful of the incessant enemies he seemed to create just by existing. But he wasn't about to tell her any of that. "I've got a lot of hideouts," he pointed out. ""I can hardly be expected to waste my time tending to each of them. I'm a busy man."

"Obviously," she said as a droplet of muddy water splashed onto the carpet. The oven pinged cheerfully. She glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen, then turned a questioning look on Eddie as he swayed in place. "Listen, uh, my dinner's ready..."

Eddie's stomach leaped to attention and rumbled loudly. _Stop that_, he thought furiously at his insides.

"Are you...hungry?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'm fine," he snapped in defiance of all available evidence to the contrary.

"Well, I've got enough for two...and it's not any good cold," she added, stifling a smile as the Riddler's stomach growled in anticipation. "Let's see if we can figure this thing out over dinner. I'll get you a towel."

* * *

_Author's Note: Hey folks - updates might be a little delayed for the next few weeks, since I've got a new temporary night job: Piracy. (No, really, it's for a theme park. I be a saucy wench, yarr!) But after Halloween, things should return to normal._


	3. The Man Who Came To Dinner

The garlic chicken was delicious. Eddie hadn't eaten a meal this good since his third (or was it fourth?) Query had left him. No one in the villain community knew how to cook anymore. Hell, when he considered his latest trio of henchgirls, he was lucky that they even knew how to put their shoes on the correct feet. When had the world turned into a gathering of imbeciles? he asked himself as he neatly captured another bit of chicken with his fork.

In the time-honored tradition shared by waitresses and air hostesses everywhere, Jackie started up a conversation as Eddie put the fork in his mouth. "So what's your name?"

Eddie stared blankly at her for a moment before swallowing. "Nygma. Edward Nygma." She'd been living in Gotham for a year. Why didn't she know who he was?

"I'm Jackie. Nice to meet you," she said pleasantly. "So what do you do for a living, Ed?"

Ah. She was just an idiot. "I'm the _Riddler_," he said patiently, gesturing with one hand to his question-marked tie drip-drying over the sink.

"Yes, and it's a lovely costume, but what do you actually do?" she asked brightly. "Doesn't the real Riddler get angry when you pretend to be him?"

His fork clattered noisily onto his plate. She...she _didn't_ just say that. His expression slackened into the disbelieving gape of a haddock realizing that the delicious bit of squid in its mouth had just punched hooks of barbed steel through its face.

"I mean, it must be great for costume parties and stuff, and it's amazing the way you've stayed in character so long, but..." She trailed off as she noticed the intense look of rage once more storming onto Eddie's face.

He slowly rose to his feet, leaning heavily on his hands as he glared at her.

Most people were unaware that cold hard cash was not the only currency in Gotham's underworld. What most rogues traded on was not money, but respect. Unfortunately, Eddie's account at the Bank of Reputation was generally overdrawn.

He'd tried to get respect in this town. Oh, yes, he'd tried again and again to scrape up the admiration that he deserved for what he did. Who else had the bravery to send the Batman a note outlining his upcoming crimes? Wasn't he the most brilliant mind in the city?

Hadn't he, Edward Nygma, finally teased the secret of the Batman's real identity out into the open? Oh, and the _fun _he'd had with that...He'd had the vigilantes _and_ the rogues' gallery wrapped around his little finger for one glorious moment. Who could have guessed that it would all come crashing so spectacularly down around him?

Well,_he_ could have guessed. It was always the same with him: no matter what, something insidiously terrible was generally lurking in his direct future. In this case, _terrible_ meant the rogues' gallery finding out about his bit of fun and taking some rather personal vengeance. The Joker had broken his fingers, Poison Ivy had nearly whipped him to death with vines covered in thorns, and Hush...he didn't want to think about what his face had looked like after Hush had done his best to turn it into something resembling ground hamburger meat. That trip through the skylight hadn't exactly been pleasant either. He still had a fork-shaped scar in his shoulderblade from where he had landed on that dinner table two stories down.

But he'd survived it all. He'd been beaten, mangled, and broken, and he still managed to get out there and challenge the Batman in spite of it. Didn't he deserve even a little respect for that? But no, all the recognition in this town was reserved for psychotic clowns or women who looked great in leather.

He got less respect than Rodney Dangerfield and he was thoroughly sick of it. "I _am_ the real Riddler! Get the _hell_ out of my lair!" he snarled.

"This place is _mine_," she pointed out, amusement lurking in her eyes. She had the _audacity_ to think this was _funny_?!

He smacked his fist down hard on the table, rattling the crockery. "It was mine _first_!"

"Well, I don't see your name on it," she said lazily.

She wanted to be childish? Fine. He could be childish too. He strode over to the cheap wallpaper in the living room and sank his fingernails into it. With a grand gesture, he tore a gigantic strip of horrible yellow paper off of the wall. Between the ragged edges of wallpaper, surrounded by emerald green paint, a purple question mark the size of a small cow gleamed triumphantly out into the room. "There it is."

* * *

The smoothly purring engine of Jackie's brain threw a rod. "Hey," she protested weakly, staring at the garish question mark painted on the plaster. "My wallpaper..." Ugly little thoughts were beginning to dance in her mind. If this _was_ some random performance artist, how would he know that there was a question mark under that particular area of wallpaper?

She wanted to believe that it was a setup. This man had merely bribed the landlord, painted the wall, replaced the wallpaper, waited for a full year, dressed up like the Riddler, rolled himself in mud and had broken into her house...why? To see the look on her face? To get a free dinner? Who would go to that much effort to do something that stupid? There weren't even any cameras with him. No, it couldn't be a setup.

But if it wasn't a setup, that meant...

That meant...

Her eyes widened in horror as she finally realized what it might mean to have a furious rogue standing in her living room. Death and dismemberment might be the least of her worries.

The Riddler balled up the wallpaper and hurled it to the floor, looking as if he'd like to repeat the experience with every scrap of her belongings. "P-please don't kill me," she stammered.

He glared at her. "I'm not going to kill you," he informed her icily. He stalked over to the couch, eyed it as if it was poisonous, and gingerly sank down onto it, crossing his feet on the coffee table. Jackie instinctively flinched as he reached into his jacket pocket. Oh, this was it. He was going to shoot her in the leg or something, she just _knew_ it...

The Riddler calmly took out a crossword puzzle book and a pen and set to work, ignoring Jackie as she cowered in the doorway. Any minute now, he'd drop the book and attack her. Or his pen would explode in a fountain of poison gas or something. Yes. Any minute now...

'Any minute now' turned into five minutes. Then ten. The Riddler flipped the page of his crossword book and proceeded to the next puzzle.

What was he doing? Why wasn't she dead yet? (Not that she was complaining, mind you, but this was not how she had expected him to react.) She cleared her throat hesitantly.

"Mmm?" he asked absently, filling in a word.

"This, uh...this really used to be your place?" she said tentatively.

Without lifting his head, he looked up and locked eyes with her. "This still _is_ my place," he said. "Feel free to leave at any time."

"But...I mean...this is my apartment now," she protested weakly. "I've got a lease and everything! It's mine legally..." she bit her lip as the Riddler arched an eyebrow at her.

"Do you honestly think that matters to me?" he inquired softly.

"Oh. Uh, good point. But, um, Mr. Riddler, I can't just _go_," she said in a rush. "I mean, I don't just live here. I work here too, I write software and I've got meetings all the time-"

"You have business meetings _here_?" he asked, shooting a pointed look at the cheerful unicorn lamp to his left.

She blushed furiously. "Over the internet," she said, pointing at the pile of computer hardware that was overtaking the tiny desk in the corner. A little webcam perched atop the pile was aimed at an empty desk chair that leaned against a unicorn-free wall.

"I'll try not to interrupt, then," he said sourly, going back to his puzzle. "I wouldn't want to interfere with something so earth-shatteringly important as a software development meeting."

"You can't just _stay_ here!" Jackie yelped.

"Watch me," he replied grimly.

In desperation, Jackie finally reached for the cell phone in its holster on her belt. "Look, I've got a phone right here," she threatened, holding it in the air. "I could have the cops here in five minutes!"

The Riddler sighed and set his puzzle book down. "You could," he agreed amiably. "And they could arrest me and take me back to Arkham, and you'd have a peaceful night here alone." He flicked a bit of lint off of his mud-stained sleeve. "And then I would pick the locks on my cell door, steal a car, and come right back here to pick up where we left off. You are _not_ living in my lair and that's _final_!" He folded his arms defiantly and glared at her.

Jackie gathered up her courage and glared back at him. "It's not your lair, it's my house," she snapped, "and I'm not going anywhere!"

"We'll see about that," he promised darkly as she stomped off to the little bedroom in the back.

_Yes, we will_, she thought as she locked herself in for the night.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: I know what you're saying. 'But Checkerboards, after the whole Hush fiasco Eddie wound up homeless, and in a coma, and covered in tattoos, and then he turned into an amateur Green Arrow on that yacht!' Not in _my_ universe, he didn't. Take that, increasingly illogical comics continuity!_


	4. Fun and Games

"Rachel, this is_serious_," Jackie snapped into the phone. "He's been here for three days!...I can't call the cops on him, he's...yes, I_know_ who he is...because he said he'd break out and come right back, that's why!"

Eddie smirked quietly to himself as he crossed out another box on his logic puzzle. Jackie deliberately turned her back on him and ducked into the bedroom. "Rachel, what the hell am I going to do?" she hissed. She rolled her eyes. "Rachel says we should flip for it," she called into the living room.

"Tell Rachel she's thinking of the wrong rogue," Eddie called back.

"You hear that?...yes, that was him...of course he's listening! This place is tiny!"

"Big enough for one," he remarked to the air.

Jackie tried to ignore him. "You're the one that told me about this place," she hissed into the phone, "and you had better get me out of this. What?...what kind of contest...oh, great idea, Rachel. I'm certain to win a battle of _wits_ versus the freaking _Riddler_!"

Eddie's smirk grew slightly more pronounced. Really, the past few days hadn't been that bad. He'd forgotten how lonely it could be to hide. And this eyesore of a couch was actually kind of comfortable, which was good, since he'd basically been living on it for half a week.

Jackie wasn't that bad of a girl, either, he mused to himself as he let his pen wander over the puzzle. She'd stopped being afraid that he would kill her in her sleep when she'd woken up unharmed on Monday. Since then, they'd come to the same kind of friendly understanding that existed among most of the rogues: don't bother me, and I won't bother you. ('Bother', in the rogues' case, generally meant 'doing anything that would cause physical harm or interfere with a scheme'. Insults and mockery were perfectly acceptable, which is why the Riddler had taken to calling Jackie 'pumpkin' and Jackie had taken to calling him variations on the theme of 'smartass'.)

"Yeah?...okay, I'll try, but he might not go for it." She clapped her cell phone shut and joined him in the living room, seating herself on the armchair opposite him.

He gazed quizzically at her from beneath the brim of his hat. "Well?"

"Rachel says we should have a contest, best out of three wins the apartment." Jackie sighed, winding the strap of her phone around her fingers.

"Really," he drawled, looking interested.

"Nothing to do with riddles," she said hurriedly, wiping the smile off of his face. "Or word games or logic puzzles or anything like that. It's got to be a fair chance for both of us."  
"Then what do you propose?" he asked. "I can't exactly go out into Gotham and run a foot-race."

"Well, if we can't leave the house, what option do we have? Hide-and-seek?" she said jokingly.

Eddie didn't laugh. "That actually might work," he said slowly, looking off into the distance.

"I was kidding, wiseass! Besides, there's nowhere to hide in here."

"No, no," he dismissed, "not Hide-and-seek, certainly, but something along those lines. Children's games. We'll be on an equal footing, we can do them here, and we'll be able to do them quickly."_And then you can get out of my lair_, he thought happily. Of course he'd win - games for children were supposed to be easy, and he was the _Riddler_ - and then everything would return to how it was supposed to be. It was a sure thing!

Of course, he was forgetting that all-too-popular saying: Sure things aren't.

* * *

And so it came to pass that the Riddler and Jacqueline embarked on a round of children's games to see who would win the ultimate prize: possession of the apartment.

The first game - Rock, Paper, Scissors - had resulted in a clear win for the Riddler. All that time locked up with mad psychiatrists had given him some very useful insights into reading people and predicting their reactions. Jackie never had a chance.

The second game - thumb wrestling - had gone rather better for Jackie than the first. Those endless hours working the keyboards had given her a grip that was impossible to escape from and she beat him three times in quick succession.

The final game in the series was Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Both of them secretly thought they'd have the other one at a clear disadvantage. Jackie's floor of the dorm had had a Pin the Tail on the Donkey tournament every weekend. True, they were generally blitzed out of their minds while they played, but she knew a few little tricks that she felt would guarantee her the victory. (Fortunately, she'd kept the copy of the game that she'd received as a gag gift from her RA when she graduated.) As for Eddie, who had managed to design and navigate death mazes for years, the simple placement of a tail on a painted animal seemed like nothing, even if he was blindfolded.

Jackie was not exactly a homemaker. In place of straight pins, which she'd never owned, they liberated a few novelty pins from Jackie's collection to attach the donkey to the wall. "Alice in Wonderland?" Eddie asked as she forced a shiny Alice pin through the poster into the wall. "I have an acquaintance you'd _love_ to meet."

"If it's the one I'm thinking of, no thanks," she said, vaguely recalling something about a Mad Hatter lurking in the depths of Gotham City's underworld. "I'd rather-"

A gunshot burst of lightning cracked overhead. The lights flickered and died. Without windows to let the evening sunlight in, it was impossible to see anything. Jackie was suddenly uncomfortably aware that she was alone in the dark with a man for the first time in her life. It figured that it would be the Riddler. "Hang on," she muttered, stumbling through the dark toward the kitchen. "Matches, matches," she muttered to herself, one hand closing around the gaudy palm tree candle she kept on her stove.

The Riddler suddenly appeared in a circle of firelight. "Here," he said, holding out a lighter. Together, they lit the little candle.

"I've got more in the other room," Jackie said. Holding the candle high, she carefully picked her way through the apartment into her bedroom. She laid the lit candle carefully on the nightstand before turning to the dresser-top full of her collection of candles in every conceivable holder. She even had an reproduction antique candelabrum with a set of tall taper candles.

A purple-gloved hand snaked around her and seized it. "This one's very nice," the Riddler remarked, tilting his head to examine it in the light of the single candle.

"Hey!" she yelped. "Get out of my bedroom!"

"It's_my_ bedroom," he replied absently, buffing a tiny scratch on the candelabrum with his thumb.

"You're impossible!"

"You're impracticable," he retorted.

"I'm_what_?"

"Never mind. How many of these do you want out there?" he asked, shifting the candelabrum to the crook of his elbow and reaching for another candle. She gave him an exasperated look before she began to fill his arms with clinking glass candleholders.

When both of them were laden down with candles, they returned to the living room and proceeded to make it flicker like a birthday cake. Merry little flames burned from candles resting on the entertainment center and on every available table in the place, even the TV trays she'd never really had an excuse to use.

"Okay. Now that we can see, on with the blindfold," Jackie said, unaware of how ridiculous that sounded until she heard the Riddler trying to stifle a laugh. "You _know_ what I meant!" she snapped.

"Yes, yes," he snickered. "Ladies first," he said, waving the strip of heavy flannel at her.

"Oh, no. Infamous criminals with unzipped flies first," she said, managing not to burst out into laughter until after Eddie had darted a panic-stricken glance toward his nether regions.

"Very funny," he said sarcastically after he'd confirmed that his zipper was, in fact, closed. "Are we doing this or not?"

"Yeah, yeah," she giggled. With a quick hand, she lifted the hat from his head and dropped it on the sofa next to his cane. "Go ahead, put it on." Eddie sighed once before wrapping the bit of cloth around his head. Jackie put her hands on his shoulders and spun him around, biting her lip to keep quiet as he flailed in a circle. When he was pointing in vaguely the right direction, she placed a little fabric donkey tail in his hand.

This was more difficult than he'd imagined. But no, he could do this. He was sure of it. If he could just remember how high that donkey had been on the wall...there! The paper of the poster crinkled satisfactorily as he rammed the tail into place.

With a triumphant grin on his face, Eddie peeled off the blindfold to see...a unicorn? The sad look in the unicorn's huge, liquid eyes was somewhat spoiled by the fuzzy donkey tail pinned to its horn.

Jackie was having quiet hysterics in the corner. "You went too far to the right," she said helpfully through her wheezing laughter.

"Thanks, pumpkin," he said icily. "Your turn."

"Okay, okay..." When she'd managed to stop laughing, she took the blindfold from Eddie and tied it around her head. Familiar darkness wrapped itself around her. _Okay. You're back in the dorm lounge, Karla's holding your drink, and the donkey's right...over...there_! As Eddie spun her, she made sure to keep one foot always pointed in the right direction. It had been enough to win her the contest several times in college, and she was fairly certain it would work here too. She had a slightly uneasy feeling about winning. What if he got violent? He was a rogue, after all...

Nah. Sure, he was a rogue, but he wasn't exactly the Joker. The worst he'd done in three days of living on her couch was make a few cutting remarks. Besides, he'd agreed to the rules of the contest. He'd have to live with it.

She couldn't keep the strut out of her step as she walked to the wall. The donkey tail landed on something that crinkled suspiciously like the donkey poster. She'd won! Not bothering to take the blindfold off, she spun and raised her arms like an Olympic gymnast. "Ta-da!" she said proudly, pulling her arms down to take a deep bow.

Unfortunately, on the way down, her left arm smacked into something heavy. As she let loose with a string of curses, she heard whatever it was thud onto the floor. "Watch out!" Eddie called, too late to do any good.

Jackie tore off the blindfold just in time to see her candelabrum with its five lit candles roll into the ball of wallpaper that still sat on the floor. It went up with a _whoosh_ of flame.

"Dammit!" she yelped, scrambling into the kitchen. Fire extinguisher, fire extinguisher..._there_ it was, mounted on the wall next to the stove! She yanked it free and raced to the living room, yanking at the tubing.

With horror widening his eyes, Eddie saw the string of question marks painted neatly around the base of the extinguisher. "_Don't!_" he yelled, trying to grab it out of her hands. In the resulting scuffle, he received an elbow in the eye that sent him staggering backward across the little room.

Jackie triumphantly squeezed the trigger. She was expecting a cloud of fluffy whiteness to spray onto the fire. Instead, a powerful stream of liquid shot out of the extinguisher and there was a tremendous_whoosh_ as the little flame exploded into a conflagration. "I told you not to do that!" Eddie shouted above the roar of the flames consuming the entertainment center.

"What the hell happened?" she shrieked, staring at the flame as it licked up her walls. Eddie grabbed Jackie's arm and dragged her to the door, scooping up his hat and cane as he went. Jackie, still clutching the extinguisher, numbly followed him out of the building. They raced up the stairs, gasping as the icy rain hit them full in the face.

Well, there went _that_ lair. Eddie scowled as fire belched happily out from the stairwell. Alarms rang insistently in the other apartments of the building as tendrils of smoke wafted upward. "What did I tell you?" he demanded. "What did I say? Didn't I say not to use that?" He pointed angrily at the extinguisher clutched in Jackie's arms.

She looked down at it and finally noticed the little green question marks. "What did you do?" she snarled.

"Me? I'm not the one who knocked over the candles!"

"I'm not the one who rigged a fire extinguisher to spray gasoline!"

He sniffed. "It wasn't gasoline, it was kerosene."

"Big difference! Who in their right mind uses an extinguisher to _start_ a fire?"

"Guy Montag," he said. She glared fiercely at him. "What? It was part of a riddle for Batman! Blame your landlord for being a cheapskate and not buying you a new one!"

The extinguisher was made of very heavy metal, so it really hurt when Jackie shoved the end of it into his stomach. He doubled over for a moment, wheezing, leaning heavily on his cane. Raindrops spattered down on the two of them as the other inhabitants of the building began racing down the fire escapes. Sirens wailed at the end of the street.

"You are a complete jerk," she hissed. "All my stuff is on fire right now because of you."

"Well, at least your next apartment will be a little more tasteful," he said. He froze. He'd only meant to think that. Had he actually said it? Judging from the look of complete and utter fury building on her face, he had.

"Nice knowing you," he said, spinning on his heel and racing away. He was almost into the nearest alley before Jackie realized he was running.

_Oh no you don't_, she snarled to herself, tucking the extinguisher under one arm and following him. She'd been in track in high school. There was no way he was getting away from her, and when she caught up with him she'd do something horrible to him involving that extinguisher and any handy orifice.

The Riddler was well aware of what she wanted to do to him. He kept thinking about it as he ran. It helped him move faster.

(_to be continued_)


	5. You Say You Want A Resolution

Of all the things in the world that the Riddler hated, being chased through the rain by a screaming woman intent on beating him to death with a fire extinguisher had to be among the top five. The two miles to his hideout felt more like thirty as he dashed through the ankle-deep rivers running down the streets.

He was headed for the lair that he'd inhabited with his three henchgirls at the beginning of the week. The girls were notorious packrats and they'd crammed their rooms full of weaponry. He was hoping he could get to one of their numerous guns before Jackie caught up with him. (Not that he particularly _wanted_ to shoot her, but he was betting that the sight of a loaded gun pointed in her direction would make her rethink her plan of making him into the world's first rogue pinata.)

The bright purple door of his lair gleamed welcomingly at him through the veil of rain whipping over his eyes. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Jackie was less than a block away. There was no time to waste with deceleration.

With a look of futile hopelessness on his face, Eddie pointed himself at the door and sped up. Oh, this was going to _hurt_...Like a motorcycle playing chicken with a steamroller, the Riddler crashed explosively into the doorframe. His feet went out from under him and he sat down hard in a puddle.

No time to rest! He scrambled to his feet and fought with the puzzle lock on the door, clicking the pieces round in their familiar patterns as he heard the determined splashes of Jackie's feet pounding toward him. _Come on, come on_, he hissed to himself as he wrestled with the slippery plastic.

The lock fell in pieces in his hands. He ripped the door open and darted inside, swinging from the doorknob in a mad half-circle to slam the door shut with his full body weight.

_Wham_! Jackie collided with the door, sending it rebounding directly into Eddie's forehead. She jammed the thrice-damned fire extinguisher into the crack of the door and started levering it open. "Just hold on a minute!" Eddie yelped as Jackie glowered at him. "This was not my fault!" He glanced down the hallway to the rooms that usually housed his henchgirls. If he was quick, he could make it there before she could snag him. He leaped backward from the door like a crazed jackrabbit. The purple portal slammed open, spilling Jackie, the extinguisher, and a sizeable amount of rain into the room. Eddie skidded down the hallway, desperately grabbing at doorknobs.

Locked.

Locked.

_Locked_!

And now Jackie had him cornered. She raised the extinguisher triumphantly and took a slow, deliberate step toward him. He sheepishly raised his hands. "Listen," he said as soothingly as possible. "Beating me to death won't solve anything."

Jackie glared at him for a few moments before slowly relaxing her white-knuckled grip on the extinguisher. "It might teach you not to leave riddle parts around," she said grimly.

Okay. He was smooth. He could talk his way out of this. "I'm sorry," he tried, feeling a little more tension drop away as she nodded. "You should have listened when I said-"

Oh, damn, she was raising the extinguisher. "Um," he said intelligently as she swung the extinguisher high over her head, eyes narrowed with fury. Eddie braced himself for the pain that was due to arrive in his immediate future, closing his eyes so he didn't have to see his own question marks as they smashed into his face. There was a seemingly endless moment of cringing anticipation.

The extinguisher clanked noisily as it hit the ground and rolled away. "What's the point?" Jackie sighed. The Riddler slitted an eye open in time to see her turn and walk away, shoulders slumped with dejection. "You're right, it's not going to fix anything."

She slouched out to the living room and shut the door, leaning against it with a sigh as she took in her surroundings for the first time. Everything was green or purple and covered with question marks. It was possibly the most garish room decoration she'd ever seen, and that was something considering that she'd been to Vegas five times in the last three years.

"And you thought _unicorns_ were stupid?" she asked incredulously, pointing at a question-mark chandelier that glimmered gaudily in the light of the sunset.

"It was a gift," he said, still coming to grips with the fact that he was not currently being battered to a pulp.

"Someone must have really hated you to give you that," she snarked back, flicking one green-glass question mark with her fingernail. "And look at the...well, _well_, Mr. Nygma," she said coyly, drawing a lacy green bra out from under a pillow on the couch. "What have we here!"

"Give me that!" he snapped, snatching it out of her hand.

"Green certainly _is_ your color," she drawled, watching his face go bright red.

He hastily tossed the bra in the pile of laundry next to the refrigerator. "It's not mine!"

"Who else would it belong to?"

"My girls." She blinked at him. "Question, Query and Quiz?" he tried. She still had no idea what he meant. "My henchgirls!"

"Well, where are they?"

"Stonegate, probably," he said. Then he reconsidered, remembering some of Question's less than salutary habits. "Or Arkham. One of the two."

"I'd imagine you would have broken them out by now instead of wasting your time burning down my house."

"Break_them_ out? Are you serious? They were useless! I mean, look at this place!" he said, waving an expressive hand at the sink full of moldy dishes, the pile of laundry that was threatening to topple over, and the stacks and stacks of magazines piling up on every available surface. "All they ever did was watch TV!"

"They can't have been that bad," Jackie said, laughing.

"They_TiVoed_ the _View_," he snarled.

"I take it back. They deserve to be in jail," Jackie said, flicking more unmentionables off of the couch before flopping down comfortably on it. "So what's for dinner?"

"Huh?"

"Dinner. You know, the third meal of the day?"

He shook his head. "What makes you think I'm giving you dinner?"

She stared incredulously at him. "You burned down my house!"

"First of all, it was _my_ house. Second of all, _you_ burned it down," Eddie said patiently. "Third of all, who said you were staying here?"

"Who said I was leaving?"

"You can't stay here!" Eddie said.

"Why not?" she challenged.

Eddie raised a hand, prepared to tick off the various reasons why she couldn't possibly remain in his lair. Unfortunately, none were coming to mind. "Because...you can't," he said lamely.

"Watch me," she said, neatly crossing her ankles on a question-marked pillow. "Where else am I supposed to go, huh?"

It was then that the Riddler uttered his three least favorite words. "I don't know!" He followed them up hastily with "Don't you have a friend to stay with or something?"

To be perfectly blunt, she didn't. The life of a code monkey did not lend itself to friends, particularly when said code monkey worked from home. (Online friends were a different matter - she had a slew of them, but unfortunately they all lived at least two hundred miles away.) Now that she thought about it, the Riddler was the closest thing she'd had to a local friend since she moved to Gotham. And didn't _that_ make her feel special.

Her uncomfortable silence answered his question. "Fine," he muttered, "you can stay here for a few days."After all, he figured, it wouldn't take that long before she was scared away, either by an invading Bat or by one of the rogues' gallery dropping by for a favor. He wandered into the kitchen to scrounge up some dinner.

Jackie shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Something was poking her neck. She sat up just long enough to ease it out from behind the cushion. It was a purple domino mask, a tag still dangling from the straps. She experimentally settled it on her nose and slid it into place.

Eddie returned to the room, holding a bag of bread in one hand. "All I've got here is..." he trailed off, seeing Jackie behind the mask. He suddenly had a very clear mental image of her in the full henchgirl outfit, racing down the streets with him, money bags clutched tightly in their fists as they left the Batman behind in a cloud of dust...

_Don't be ridiculous_. "Sandwiches," he said firmly, dismissing the image as Jackie hastily yanked the mask off. "Come on, the kitchen's this way." Jackie tossed the mask onto the back of the couch and followed him. The empty eyeholes watched them knowingly as they disappeared in search of supper.

* * *

_Author's Note: Hey, look! A fairly happy ending! I never knew I had it in me. Thank you all for reviewing and reading - it makes me positively gleeful when people like what I do. _

_Just for fun, let's play Reference This! Harley and Eddie robbing Wayne Manor appeared in Harley Quinn #6. Eddie's moment of glory - right, Bruce? - is located in Batman #619. His unfortunate incidents with the Joker and Hush can be found in Batman: Gotham Knights # 50-55, and his ill-advised visit with Ivy is in Detective Comics #797-799. Query, Quiz, and Question are partially based on the Query and Echo who appeared in the Detective Comics 1995 Annual. _

_Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper', which is a lovely and twisted little tale of madness, and 'Casey at the Bat' was written by Ernest Thayer. The giant squirrels are from Trigger Happy TV. Guy Montag is from Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', where they indeed use extinguishers to start fires._

_I have three stories in the works right now and I'm not sure which one will be posted next. I was intending to post my Joker/Harley Quinn story (which is _not_ a tale of romance, thanks muchly), but then the Mad Hatter and Two-Face each demanded that I devote time to them and not Mr. Happypants. Whichever story I finish first will show up in a few days. Until then, bonsoir!_


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